As a self confessed fan of trying new ways to get an education (or in hipsterspeak, hack education) I’ve been following Patreon for a while now. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Patreon is the brainchild of a musician who was popular on YouTube, but found that support for his music wasn’t turning into support financially. At least not for him. Cue a new way of doing things that allowed patrons to support projects they liked and for people to get paid for it.

So far, so simple. Patreon has been successful enough for people to copy it and spawn sub groups that cover science and education. The education sub group is so so, but the science section seems to be the natural abode for the weird and the wacky. The amounts of money involved are not huge and whilst the quality varies, some of them (Mr Carlson’s lab for instance) seem to tackle things that you just aren’t going to learn at school. Or college .. or anywhere for that matter.